Winter’s Pulsing

In Adam @ Home, a comic strip in Sunday’s Boston Globe newspaper, Adam has a chat with Mr. January, taunting him that he’s beaten Mr. January one more year. Even with the heavy snow and cold temperatures, and some brutal winds, at the end of the month, Adam stands unscathed. He jests he should change his name to “June Jr.” Mr. January dumps a wheelbarrow load of snow on him from the porch roof. “Lesson learned. Don’t trash talk Nature,” emerges from underneath the snow.

Nature’s way is one of pulsation and this time of winter is the pulsation of turning inward. Sometimes, though, we turn too far in – we get complacent in our Snuggie on the sofa, and when our noses stick out from under the down comforter, we withdraw deep into the insulating warmth.

Pulsation has two sides. If we turn in too tightly, bury down so deeply, we can forget there’s a beautiful wintery world out there, pristine and sparkling. We lose our subtle awareness that there’s a deeper essence within – we become fixated only on protection of self, we become too free in the unlimited dimensions of self with the greater possibility of becoming lost.

Pulsation is inherent in the idea of sequence – one thing coming after the other. All that turns cold and blustery will one day be sinfully warm.

Within each of us, just underneath the surface of our conscious awareness, is an energy that buzzes with delight and joy. An internal flame burns – in winter, we tend to insulate ourselves to keep the fire, now sometimes an ash-coated ember, from going out. While insulation obviously works, sharing your light outwardly is like stoking a dying fire. The outward flow of energy fans the flame into a bonfire!

Go out for a winter’s walk, smile from your eyes at everyone you meet, anonymously bring flowers to a co-worker’s desk, feed a meter that’s out of time, pay $4 more at Starbucks and tell the barista it’s for the next person in line, share a full body hug with a friend, tell a stranger a truth you see about them (“you’re smile brightens the entire bus”), wave a ‘thank-you’ to the crazed driver who just delayed you (who knows? that delay might have disintegrated an accident ahead). You get it. Now go for it!

The theme of Pulsation is used often by Anusara yoga teachers as pulsation is the heart of Nature. Everything pulses – your heart, lungs, seasons, day to night, low and high tide. We align with Nature’s pulsation as a vehicle to go deeper into our consciousness, into the center of our own being, into the heart of who we are. I did write this blog from my own understanding of pulsation. You can find more about the topic at http://www.anusara.com.